Podcast: Dr. Bill Bria on CMIOs and medical informatics
WASHINGTON—Live from the World Health Care Congress, here’s an interview with Dr. Bill Bria, chief medical information officer of Shriners Hospitals for Children and president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems. We talk about the increasing importance of CMIOs as hospitals align their IT strategies with overall institutional goals, including quality improvement, and we discuss the similar growth of AMDIS. Bria also plugs the annual AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection, which is OK with me since I’ve been shameless in plugging my article in Red Herring.
I really liked this ‘medical informatics training programs should emphasize education in management and executive leadership in order to prepare the next generation of CMIOs to effectively lead health systems. Another approach would be for more health care management training programs, including MBA and MPH degree programs, to include courses on medical informatics. Identifying which areas of additional medical informatics expertise would be most valuable to CMIOs, such as outcomes assessment or patient safety, is worthy of further investigation as the numbers of CMIOs increase and health care informatics and management training programs evolve to prepare them. As more physician leaders develop expertise using information technology to effect change and improvement in our health care system, the current CMIO and CMO positions might converge into one role. Regardless of the future title, physician leadership in health care technology will only continue to grow in importance.’ Cheers, Blair